WICHITA FALLS, Texas (ABP) — Cheryl Ritchie did not wake up one morning and say, “I’m going to collect school supplies for the students.” But she did wake up to the needs of those in her own small city, she noted.
Ritchie founded Project Back to School — an effort to provide school supplies for students in need in her city of Wichita Falls, Texas — after attending a seminar about the homeless in her state. Hearing the statistics, she prayed God would make her more sensitive to how she could serve.
Shortly after, she volunteered with a program that sent food home with students who otherwise would go hungry over the weekend. She saw more than 300 students from a school five minutes from her church receiving food.
Students from Wichita Falls elementary schools hold and wear their new backpacks from Project Back to School.
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“It broke my heart,” said Ritchie, a member of First Baptist Church in Wichita Falls. “I honestly didn’t think there were needs like that in Wichita Falls,” a city of about 100,000 on the northern edge of the state.
Ritchie had “blinders on,” she said. “And those kids have real needs. We take it for granted that we have food, clothes and heat in our house.”
Out of 500 students in one elementary school, 483 qualify for the free- or reduced-lunch plan. However, these children need more than food; they need coats, hygiene items and school supplies, Ritchie said.
Her church started collecting items for the students, and the project “turned into a little mission.”
Ritchie focused on obtaining school supplies. She looked online and found pre-assembled supply boxes and backpacks for $17 a child. She wanted to secure enough donations to equip every student in the city's 18 elementary schools.
Many churches in her area already collected supplies for the schools, but not on a large scale. She talked to churches, and six women volunteered to help with this project. It gained momentum, and more than 20 churches started participating.
“God’s hand was in it,” Ritchie said. “He moved those people to reach out and help the kids.”
As the ministry grew, so did the community’s awareness.
“People looked at what the need was, and they wrote me checks,” Ritchie said. “It wasn’t just a Baptist project. It was a true, citywide mission. I think that’s why it was so successful.”
Jaime Feaster, co-chair of the children’s team at Westside Baptist Church in Wichita Falls, learned about Project Back to School when Ritchie told her church about the ministry. Westside Baptist, which averages about 130 people a week in Sunday school, agreed to participate, and they gave $1,500 for the project. Altogether, the project, community and volunteers raised $55,000.
“I never thought that our city would step up and be such a huge part of it,” Feaster said. “…I hope that the Lord will use it [the project] to show these families that there are people that care about them and have invested [their] time and money.”
The group wants to turn the project into a full-blown non-profit organization and expand the ministry to focus on more than school supplies, Feaster said.
Rod Payne, missions and media minister at First Baptist Church in Wichita Falls, said his church gave $8,500 toward Project Back to School.
“We may never see the people we’re ministering to in the walls of our church, but they’ll know that a Christian person reached out to them. Hopefully they’ll find themselves in a church somewhere, even if it isn’t our church.”
Payne thinks this program and similar ministries are important because they show people “Christians are not just talk.”
“They’ll see someone giving them something and not expecting anything back,” Payne said.
“I’d love for this [project] to encourage other people,” Ritchie said. “It would be great to have Project Back to School all over Texas.”
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Lauren Heartsill is a communications intern for the Baptist General Convention of Texas.
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